Mike Wallace

Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace (May 9, 1918 – April 7, 2012) was an American journalist, game show host, actor, and media personality. He interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers during his seven-decade career. He was one of the original correspondents for CBS' 60 Minutes, which debuted in 1968. Wallace retired as a regular full-time correspondent in 2006, but still appeared occasionally on the series until 2008.

Wallace enlisted in the United States Navy in 1943 and during World War II served as a communications officer on the USS Anthedon, a submarine tender. He saw no combat but traveled to Hawaii, Australia, and Subic Bay in the Philippines, then patrolling the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea and south of Japan. After being discharged in 1946, Wallace returned to Chicago.

Wallace announced wrestling in Chicago in the late 1940s and early 1950s, sponsored by Tavern Pale beer.

In the late 1940s, Wallace was a staff announcer for the CBS radio network. He had displayed his comic skills when he appeared opposite Spike Jones in dialogue routines. He was also the voice of Elgin-American in their commercials on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life. As "Myron Wallace", he portrayed New York City detective Lou Kagel on the short-lived radio drama series "Crime on the Waterfront".

In 1949, Wallace began to move to the new medium of television. In that year, he starred under the name Myron Wallace in a short-lived police drama, Stand By for Crime.[11]

Wallace hosted a number of game shows in the 1950s, including The Big Surprise, Who's the Boss? and Who Pays?. Early in his career Wallace was not known primarily as a news broadcaster. It was not uncommon during that period for newscasters (the term then used) to announce, do commercials and host game shows; Douglas Edwards, John Daly, John Cameron Swayze and Walter Cronkite hosted game shows as well. Wallace also hosted the pilot episode for Nothing but the Truth, which was helmed by Bud Collyer when it aired under the title To Tell the Truth. Wallace occasionally served as a panelist on To Tell the Truth in the 1950s. He also did commercials for a variety of products, including Procter & Gamble's Fluffo brand shortening.

Publicity photo for the television program Mike Wallace Interviews, 1957

By the early 1960s, Wallace's primary income came from commercials for Parliament cigarettes, touting their "man's mildness" (he had a contract with Philip Morris to pitch their cigarettes as a result of their original sponsorship of The Mike Wallace Interview). Between June 1961 and June 1962 he and Joyce Davidson hosted a New York–based nightly interview program for Westinghouse Broadcasting[13] called PM East for one hour; it was paired with PM West, 30 minutes, hosted by San Francisco Chronicle television critic Terrence O'Flaherty. Westinghouse syndicated the series to television stations it owned and to a few other cities. People in southern and southwestern states and in the metropolitan areas of Chicago and Philadelphia were unable to watch it.

A frequent guest on the PM East segment was Barbra Streisand. Only the audio of some of her conversations with Wallace survives.[13] Westinghouse wiped the videotapes. Also in the early 1960s, Wallace was the host of the David Wolper–produced Biography series.

After his elder son's death in 1962, Wallace decided to get back into news and hosted an early version of CBS Morning News from 1963 through 1966. In 1964 he interviewed Malcolm X, who, half-jokingly, commented "I probably am a dead man already."[14] The black leader was assassinated a few months later in February 1965.

In 1967, Wallace anchored the documentary CBS Reports: The Homosexuals. "The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous", Wallace said in the piece. "He is not interested or capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life, his love life, consists of a series of one-chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits. And even on the streets of the city—the pick-up, the one night stand, these are characteristics of the homosexual relationship."[15] In later years, Wallace came to regret his participation in the episode. "I should have known better," he said in 1992.[16] Speaking in 1996, Wallace stated, "That is—God help us—what our understanding was of the homosexual lifestyle a mere twenty-five years ago because nobody was out of the closet and because that's what we heard from doctors—that's what [psychiatrist Charles] Socarides told us, it was a matter of shame."[16]

His career as the lead reporter on 60 Minutes led to some run-ins with the people interviewed—and claims of misconduct by female colleagues. While interviewing Louis Farrakhan, Wallace alleged that Nigeria was the most corrupt country in the world. Farrakhan immediately shot back that Americans were in no moral position to judge, declaring "Has Nigeria dropped an atomic bomb that killed people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Have they killed off millions of Native Americans?" "Can you think of a more corrupt country?" asked Wallace. "I'm living in one," said Farrakhan.[17]

In 1981, Wallace was forced to apologize for a racial slur he had made about blacks and Hispanics. During a break while preparing a 60 Minutes report on a bank that had been accused of duping low-income Californians, Wallace was caught on tape joking that "You bet your ass [the contracts are] hard to read" if you're reading them over watermelon or tacos.[19][20]

Attention was re-drawn to that incident several years later when protests were raised against Wallace's being selected to give a university commencement address at the same ceremony during which Nelson Mandela was being awarded an honorary doctorate in absentia for his fight against racism. Wallace initially called the protestors' complaint "absolute foolishness".[21] However, he subsequently apologized for his earlier remark, and added that when he had been a student decades earlier on the same university campus, "though it had never really caused me any serious difficulty here ... I was keenly aware of being Jewish, and quick to detect slights, real or imagined.... We Jews felt a kind of kinship [with blacks]", but "Lord knows, we weren't riding the same slave ship."[22]

Wallace's reputation has been retrospectively affected by his admission that he had harassed female colleagues at 60 Minutes over many years. "Back in the 1970s and ’80s, 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace was known for putting his hand on the backs of his female CBS News co-workers and unsnapping the clasps on their bras. 'It wasn't a secret. I have done that', Wallace told Rolling Stone magazine in 1991."[23] In 2018, claims of sexual misconduct at 60 Minutes led to the resignation of executive producer Jeff Fager, who had overseen the news show for 36 years. He resigned several months after a July 27 story by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker.[24] Not only did Farrow's story accuse Fager of ignoring and enabling misconduct by several high-ranking male producers at 60 Minutes, but Farrow also cited former employees who accused Fager himself of misconduct.[25]

On March 14, 2006, Wallace announced his retirement from 60 Minutes after 37 years with the program. He continued working for CBS News as a "Correspondent Emeritus", albeit at a reduced pace.[26] In August 2006, Wallace interviewed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[27] Wallace's last CBS interview was with retired baseball star Roger Clemens in January 2008 on 60 Minutes.[28] Wallace's previously vigorous health (Morley Safer described him in 2006 as "having the energy of a man half his age") began to fail and in June 2008 his son Chris said that his father would not be returning to television.[29]

Wallace expressed regret with regard to the one big interview he was never able to secure: First Lady Pat Nixon.[30]

Wallace had two children with his first wife, Norma Kaphan.[31] Wallace's younger son, Chris, is also a journalist. His elder son, Peter, died at age 19 in a mountain-climbing accident in Greece in 1962.[32]

From 1949 to 1954, Wallace was married to Patrizia "Buff" Cobb, an actress and step-daughter to Gladys Swarthout. The two of them hosted the "Mike and Buff Show" on CBS Television in the early 50's. They also hosted "All Around Town" in 1951 and 1952.[33]

For many years, Wallace unknowingly suffered from depression. In an article he wrote for Guideposts, Wallace related, "I'd had days when I felt blue and it took more of an effort than usual to get through the things I had to do."[34] It worsened in 1984 after General Westmoreland filed a $120 million libel lawsuit against Wallace and CBS over statements they made in the documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception (1982). Westmoreland claimed the documentary made him appear as if he manipulated intelligence. The lawsuit, Westmoreland v. CBS, was later dropped after CBS issued a statement explaining they never intended to portray the general as disloyal or unpatriotic. During the proceedings, Wallace was hospitalized with what was diagnosed as exhaustion. His wife Mary forced him to go to a doctor, who diagnosed Wallace with clinical depression. He was prescribed an antidepressant and underwent psychotherapy. Out of a belief that it would be perceived as weakness, Wallace kept his depression a secret until he revealed it in an interview with Bob Costas on Costas' late-night talk show, Later.[34] In a later interview with colleague Morley Safer, he admitted having attempted suicide circa 1986.[35]

Wallace received a pacemaker more than 20 years before his death, and underwent triple bypass surgery in January 2008.[3] He lived in a care facility the last several years of his life.[3] In 2011, CNN host Larry King visited him and reported that he was in good spirits, but his physical condition was noticeably declining.

Wallace considered himself a political moderate. He was friends with Nancy Reagan and her family for over 75 years.[36] Nixon wanted him for his press secretary. Fox News said, "He didn't fit the stereotype of the Eastern liberal journalist." Interviewed by his son on Fox News Sunday, he was asked if he understood why people feel a disaffection from the mainstream media. "They think they're wide-eyed commies; liberals," Mike replied, a notion he dismissed as "damned foolishness".[37]

Wallace died at his residence in New Canaan, Connecticut, from natural causes, on April 7, 2012, a month and two days before his 94th birthday.[3][38] The night after his death, Morley Safer announced his death on 60 Minutes. On April 15, 2012, a full episode of 60 Minutes aired which was dedicated to remembering his life.[39][40][41]

^Brozan, Nadine. "Chronicle", The New York Times, March 16, 1993. Retrieved February 5, 2008. "Mike Wallace is lending a hand to his old school, Brookline High School, at a benefit -- unusual for a Massachusetts public school -- in New York tomorrow evening. Mr. Wallace, class of '35, will interview the school's acting headmaster, Dr. Robert J. Weintraub, at a cocktail party that is expected to draw 60 or so Brookline graduates to the University Club on West 54th Street."

^Morganfield, Robbie (1987-05-01). "Veteran Journalist Mike Wallace, Calling Remarks He Made Six Years Ago "Arguably Racist," Plans To Apologize Saturday When He Speaks at the University of Michigan's Spring Commencement". USA Today.